Genting Casino are always a few steps ahead when it comes to offering the latest and best Oriental-themed slots – which is hardly surprising given their Malaysian heritage. It therefore came as no surprise to us that they’ve just added the excellent Imperial Dragon slots from Blueprint Gaming to their catalogue – a relatively rare game but one that upon further inspection most definitely belongs up-front at any casino that’s serious about promoting the Chinese New Year.

Play 20 lines of classy Chinese fun

Imperial Dragon is a 5-reel, 20-liner with vivid, attention grabbing yet highly tasteful visuals. Symbols include dragons, lanterns, temples, fans and more, and you can play from just 20p to £5 per line.

The soundtrack is suitably Eastern and was clearly developed using rather more imagination than most – an approach used for the background as well which feature a rose-tinted classically-styled village with pagodas and cherry blossom trees setting the scene perfectly.

Imperial Dragon slots features comes with a two-level gamble feature: After every line win you’ll be given the chance to enter a ladder gamble game to improve your wins, though you can turn off this feature if you wish.

The wild symbol is also the most valuable in Imperial Dragon slots, yielding 100, 2,000 and 20,000 coins for 3, 4 or 5 on a winning line. The Chinese temple and balloon symbols are linked, meaning you can land ‘of a kind’ combinations to win pay-outs. These pay 30 for three, 80 for four or 400 for five; the green Komodo dragon, meanwhile, pays 40 for three, 100 for four and 500 for five.

The Gold Dragon Bonus: For advanced players only...

When three or more scatters land anywhere on the reels, the Golden Dragon Bonus is triggered. This gives you free spins based on how many scatters triggered the feature with three, four and five scatters triggering 15, 20 and 50 free spins respectively. During your free spins you’ll also be able to collect scatters to unlock bonus reels and eliminate lower-value symbols.

This is what makes Imperial Dragon so fascinating, and it needs to be played before you can get a full understanding of it, though we’ll try with a simple example:

Suppose you collect 12 scatters during free spins and Reel Two becomes wild: If you collect 18 scatters, you’ll get expanding wilds on Reel Three, and the 10, J and Q symbols will be eliminated. 24 Golden Dragon symbols, meanwhile, unlocks reel set four, which will become flooded with wilds, and eliminates all lower value playing card symbols from the board.

Unlocking any further set of reels will win you five extra free spins. The free spins will continue until all spins are used up, whereupon the player is awarded the amount displayed in the Bonus Winnings panel.

The Golden Dragon Bonus turns a fairly ordinary – if exceptionally attractive – game into a strategic challenge that will give Mahjong a run for its money, and it’s why you need to drop everything and join up at Genting if you’re a true slots fanatic who enjoys being tested to the max and rewarded accordingly.

There’s a new player slots welcome bonus of 100% at Genting and it’s worth up to £1,000 – so if you want to get the Chinese New Year off with a bang then you know where to go and which game to try!